Anton Nosik, a prominent Kremlin critic whom a few describe as the “founder of the Russian Internet”, shocked many liberals when he wrote on LiveJournal that “whoever bombs Syria today, I very much welcome it. And if [Syria] is erased from the face of the earth, I wouldn’t be disappointed at all, I would only say thanks”. US and Russian officials agreed publicly to engage in communications to “deconflict” the airspace for their respective warplanes, but have only publicly acknowledged one such meeting, simply to establish that they should engage in a dialogue. “This is further reassurance for our allies on the eastern flank of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – for the Baltic states and for Poland”, said Fallon, according to a Guardian report.
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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the explosions killed 14 IS fighters and wounded more than 20. IS-affiliated accounts on Twitter also announced the militants had seized those villages. The base is located around 16 kilometres northeast of Aleppo city and about 1.6 kilometres away from a government-held industrial zone on the northern edge of Aleppo.
The announcement came as IS launched a surprise attack in the northern province of Aleppo, seizing a string of villages from rebels.
An image grab taken from a video made available on the Russian Defense Ministry’s official website on October 7, 2015 shows a Russian warship launching a cruise missile in the Caspian Sea during a strike against Daesh positions in Syria.
The Observatory said rebels had shot down a helicopter in Hama province in western Syria.
“Why didn’t America attack Daesh fighters during their attack?” asked Rami Abdurrahman, director of the Observatory.
It was not clear whether Gen Hamedani’s killing was related to that IS offensive. Syrian troops launched an offensive last week in an attempt to break the siege.
Iranian lawmaker Esmail Kosari said Hamedani helped coordination between Syrian armed forces and the voluntary forces in their fight against the Islamic State militia (IS).
Hamedani is one of the most senior Guard commanders to be killed in Syria, and the second to be killed this year.
Iraq’s government and powerful Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias question the United States’ resolve in fighting Islamic State militants, who control a third of the country, saying U.S.-led coalition air strikes are ineffective.
Friday’s news is yet another black eye for the reluctant US effort to wage war in Syria, where American officials believed it could combat the entrenched Islamic State group without involving itself in the separate civil war between domestic rebels and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad that began in early 2011. The rest have hit “the moderate opposition, the only forces fighting ISIS in Syria”, he said. Insurgents have been advancing there since summer, threatening the coastal region where Assad’s family and the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, are concentrated. Iran is majority Shiite.
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Since 2012, the CIA-run clandestine rebel-vetting programme has been conducted outside Syria, in partner countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Turkey.
